The first band of next year’s Groovin The Moo lineup may have just been revealed as a super-sized indie folk collective reveal their plans to return to tour Australia in April 2014, the month that the annual regional music festival usually takes place in.
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros have confirmed they are returning Down Under next year. In a soon-to-be published interview with the band’s drummer and backing singer Orpheo McCord, the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros percussionist reveals, “We’re coming out in April of next year.”
The 11-piece ensemble, led by Alex Ebert and featuring a rotating cast of musos, will be touring Australia off the back of their new self-titled album, their third record shows “they’ve gone retrograde, straight back to the free loving 1960s,” as our Tone Deaf reviewer wrote.
“So it’s not for a while but we’re getting all of that sorted out now,” McCord confirms of the April tour. “I love [Australia]. Me and Mark [Noseworthy] – one of the guitar players in the band – we’re both surfers so the last time we came to Australia was awesome because we got to get quite a bit of surfing in.”
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros were last in the country as support for Mumford & Sons on their Australian Tour late last year, which included the Gentlemen of the Road mini-festival stopover in the regional New South Wales town of Dungog (which coincidentally led to Yacht Club DJs being handpicked for the upcoming American/Canadian leg of the concert series). “We’re coming out in April of next year… we’re getting all of that sorted out now.”
“Australians, from my experience, have been so hospitable. It’s just a friendly, welcoming culture,” says McCord of the band’s last visit in October 2012. “You know, it was so easy for people to be like, ‘oh yeah mate, come on let’s go for a surf’ and we’d have a day off and go down to Byron Bay or the Gold Coast or wherever. It’s so amazing to be able to surf and go back and play a show – it’s pretty rare that you get to have that experience, so to be able to do that is so fun and so exciting,” says the drummer.
The confirmation of an April visit from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros put them as strong contenders for the Groovin The Moo 2014 lineup, the annual music festival having traditionally been held across mid-April to late May each year.
“In what is becoming an increasingly ruthless market, Groovin’ The Moo has managed to occupy an enviable niche,” as our Tone Deaf reviewer at this year’s Bendigo leg noted, marking it as Australia’s largest regional festival since its inception in 2005.
The festival checked in to Maitland, Canberra, Bendigo, Townsville, and Bunbury for several sold out legs in 2013, where thousands of punters flocked to see the lineup that included Frightened Rabbit, The Kooks, Flume, Tame Impala, The Temper Trap, They Might Be Giants and plenty more.
Groovin The Moo are also in talks with the mayor Dubbo, Matthew Dickerson, who is keen to secure the regional festival following the success of Triple J’s One Night Stand festival. Back in June, Mayor Dickerson said he had been in negotiations with festival promoters Cattleyard Productions, but noted “they’re not sure if the Groovin The Moo model is exactly the right model for Dubbo,” says the Mayor. “But there might be some other modified versions that might be appropriate… something smaller.”
Read our review of Groovin The Moo 2013 in Bendigo and Maitland
View all the photo galleries for Groovin The Moo 2013 in:
Bunbury | Bendigo | Canberra | Maitland
